Apparent Wind (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 7)

by Dawn Lee McKenna

  “I bought it all today,” he said as he slapped the steaks on the grill.

  Maggie sat down at the table. “It’s like it’s my birthday or something,” she said, picking up the tongs. “Do you want me to fix you some salad?”

  “Do I have a concussion I don’t know about?”

  “Never mind.”

  Maggie served herself some salad, then rummaged through the dressings until she found a creamy balsamic. She picked at the seal until she got it open, then poured a little onto her salad. Then she sipped her wine and waited for Wyatt. The aroma of sizzling steak fat made him sexier than he already was.

  He flipped the ribeyes, gave them fewer than thirty seconds to warm their backsides, then slipped them back onto the plate and brought them to the table.

  “So, here’s the deal,” he said, as he sat down and forked a steak onto each of their plates. “We can talk about work. Yours and mine. We can talk about Axel, because of course we will.” He picked up his fork and knife. “This other thing, whatever it is, we’ll wait till we’ve eaten and given the wine a chance to hit us a little.” He looked at her for approval.

  She swallowed, then nodded. “That sounds good,” she said.

  He pointed his fork at her. “Quit looking so scared; it pisses me off,” he said. “Have you cheated on me?”

  “No!”

  “Then eat,” he said.

  They each had the first bites of their steak in silence, then Maggie sighed. “I arrested one of my oldest friends today,” she said quietly.

  Wyatt nodded as he cut his steak. “I heard,” he said. “That was a dumb move on Little Curtis’s part.”

  “He says he wants the county to know he’s tough on crime or some crap like that,” Maggie said.

  “He’s a politician. Some law enforcement guys make great politicians, but I don’t know too many politicians who make good law enforcement officers.”

  “Nobody in the department likes him,” Maggie said.

  Wyatt put his cutlery down on his plate and looked at her. “Here’s the thing. You guys not liking him, that can make him pretty ineffective, and that’s okay with me. He’s an ass, and he really shouldn’t be in his position.” He took a drink of his wine. “But him not liking you guys, that could be dangerous. It can make him make decisions that put you in harm’s way, just because he’s indifferent to you, or worse. You need to try to get along with him. Don’t kiss his butt, but don’t make him resent you, either. Or fear you.”

  Maggie nodded. “I know. We know.” She took another bite of steak. When she looked up from her plate, Wyatt was frowning at her.

  “We joke about it, but it really would be perfectly fine with me if you got out,” he said quietly.

  Maggie swallowed her steak before nodding. “I think about that some days. I’ve thought about it a lot today.” She shook her head. “But now’s probably not a good time. There are enough changes going on, enough changes coming.”

  “Yeah. My job. Us,” he said quietly.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Other things, too.”

  “Are you gonna get around to proposing, then?” he asked her, giving her an almost gentle smile.

  He had told her a few weeks back that she would have to be the one to propose, and that he would say yes. But then other things had happened, and it just hadn’t been the right time yet.

  “Well, yeah,” she said. “I’m working on that.”

  “Well, when you do, be aware that I’m not going to want to putz around about it,” he said lightly.

  Maggie gave him a half-smile, the lighter moment lifting some of the weight from her chest. “What’s the matter? You afraid of all that sexual tension you say I’m bottling up?”

  He levelled those soft brown eyes at her, his impressive brows meeting in a frown, then folded his arms on the table. “I’m not the least bit scared of you,” he said quietly. “I may be in my dotage, but I can take you on my worst day.”

  Maggie swallowed hard, the bit of steak on her fork suspended halfway to her mouth.

  “We may have both preferred to save it for the honeymoon,” Wyatt said. “But I have news for you. After the wedding, it’s always the honeymoon.”

  “Okeedoke,” Maggie said weakly.

  MAGGIE AND WYATT ATE the rest of their meal minus any further romantic commentary or flirting. Wyatt told her his thoughts on his first weeks as something other than an active cop, something he had been for almost thirty years. Maggie listened more than spoke, and then they moved back to her present case.

  By the time they’d cleared their plates, she’d told him the scant evidence they had in the case, shared with him her sadness when she’d had to take the call from Marisol’s mother, who’d been notified in person by Tampa PD. Maggie explained that Mrs. Corzo was a widow, that her son was accompanying her to Apalach in the morning. In the meantime, Maggie would follow what few leads she had, mainly Marisol’s phone contacts.

  They brought fresh glasses of wine back out to the patio, and sat down on the rattan loveseat that faced the yard. Wyatt turned to face her and put an arm on the back of the loveseat behind her.

  “You gonna go talk to Boudreaux?” he asked her quietly.

  Maggie couldn’t help looking away. She focused on the two Sabal palms against the privacy fence, the sound of their fronds rasping against the wood. She swallowed. “Yeah,” she said.

  “Talk to me about Boudreaux,” he said gently.

  She looked over at him, her face suddenly warm, her eyes hot with moisture in an instant.

  “I know it’s Boudreaux,” he said. “Just talk to me.”

  Maggie let out a breath, blinked a few times to clear her eyes. “The night you went to Tallahassee for the meeting with FDLE...” She drifted off, then took a breath. “Look, if I explain the whole thing, you’re going to think a lot of wrong things, things that will hurt you, before I get to the point. So I’ll just blurt it out there, and then explain it. Okay?”

  He swallowed. “Okay.”

  Maggie stared back at him a moment. She had yet to say it out loud, even to herself.

  “Boudreaux is my father,” she said. “My biological father.”

  He didn’t blink. She saw him swallow once, his eyes never leaving hers, and there was a kindness, or sympathy, in his eyes that undid her. She felt the tears slip down her cheeks. Wyatt reached out and gently swiped them away with a thumb. Then he sighed.

  “How long have you known that?” he asked after a moment.

  “Just since that night,” she said.

  “I had a feeling it was something like that,” he said quietly.

  Maggie’s surprise shocked her tear ducts into shutting down. “What—Wyatt, you’ve always insisted he had the hots for me.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Right up until the day we played dueling death threats over at Boss.” He saw her questioning look, and took a drink of his wine before explaining. “His was just way too heartfelt for someone that just had a sexual interest. To be honest, I walked away from that table thinking that the man was actually in love with you. But then, what, the next day, Miss Evangeline said something that gave me pause for thought.”

  “I don’t understand,” Maggie said.

  “At the Soda Fountain, when that kid was hassling Sky,” he answered. “She said he was a fool because he didn’t realize who Sky was. At first, I thought she meant because you were a cop. But somewhere between here and Tallahassee, the other thing crept into my head. That maybe Sky was something to Boudreaux.”

  “Why didn’t you say something to me?” Maggie asked quietly.

  “Tell me how I would start that conversation, Maggie,” he said gently. “And what if I was wrong?”

  Maggie nodded, just barely, then looked back out at the yard a moment.

  “Boudreaux told you?” Wyatt asked.

  Maggie shook her head. “No. Not exactly.”

  She heard him sigh, and she turned back around. He had drained the last of his wine. He
set the glass down on the rattan coffee table.

  “You know it’s bothered me for a while, this connection between Daddy and Boudreaux that no one wants to give me an honest answer about,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  Maggie took a deep breath and let it out. “I really thought that maybe Daddy had done something wrong, back in ’77. I thought maybe he had been Boudreaux’s alibi for some reason.” She took a large swallow of her wine, waited for the warmth of it to drift down her throat and into her stomach. Wyatt waited, too.

  “It bugged me that Boudreaux was the one Daddy sent to help me during the hurricane,” Maggie said. “It bugged me that he didn’t approve of me spending time with Boudreaux all summer, but it never seemed to scare him.” She looked over at Wyatt. “He should have been a little scared by that, don’t you think?”

  Wyatt didn’t answer. It wasn’t really a question.

  “The day you left for Tallahassee, I was talking to Daddy about you, about our future,” Maggie went on. “Daddy said something about how you would be okay, that it didn’t take a saint to raise another man’s child.”

  She stopped, swallowed. She had rehearsed so many times how to explain it so that it made sense, so that her thoughts back then made sense. Now she was forgetting how to put it all. Wyatt just waited.

  “It probably wouldn’t have meant all that much to me, what he said,” she continued. “Except that it freaked him out that he said it. I mean, Daddy doesn’t freak out, but he just froze for a second, and he wouldn’t look at me.”

  Maggie looked away again. An egret had landed at the far back end of Wyatt’s yard, was high-stepping in circles in that slow way they did.

  “I just…for the rest of that day, all kinds of little things just seemed to drift into one whole, and I couldn’t make it all shut up,” she said. She looked back at Wyatt. “So, after you left, I walked over to Boudreaux’s.”

  “Okay,” he said simply. “Did you ask him about it?”

  “No, but he confirmed it for me anyway,” she said.

  “How so?”

  Maggie sighed. “I pretty much insinuated that I had feelings for him, or at least I asked him if he had ever considered that that could happen.” She couldn’t hold Wyatt’s gaze. It had been stupid, and she felt stupid telling it.

  “What the hell,” Wyatt said quietly.

  “I know,” she said to the egret.

  “What if you’d been wrong, Maggie?” he asked. “What if he’d been all in favor of that?”

  “Then I would have backpedaled like hell and ruined a friendship that mattered to me, whether I should have been having that friendship or not.” She looked back at him. “And then I would have told you that you’d been right all along. But deep down I knew it. I just did.”

  She looked down at her hands, wrapped tightly around her wine glass, and took a deep breath before she looked back up at Wyatt. “I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t want to lose that friendship. I even spent a very nice hour or so with him, just letting him make me laugh, just forgetting everything else, because I knew one way or another, everything was about to change. And as embarrassed as I am to say this to your face, I was kind of wishing he would go for it. The friendship would still be over, but at least Daddy would still be my daddy and I would still be who I thought I was.”

  Wyatt’s arm dropped to her shoulders and he started to pull her toward him, but she pulled back, laid her hand on his chest. “No. I’ll cry and I just don’t want to right now,” she said.

  “Okay.” He pulled his arm away, rested his chin on his hand. “So how did he react?”

  Maggie shook her head, tried to give a half-hearted laugh that came out as frustration. “He was kind.” She looked back at Wyatt. “It scared the crap out of him, I could see it. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that I would…whatever. But he tried very hard not to hurt my feelings.”

  “But he didn’t come right out and say he was your father,” Wyatt said quietly.

  “No. But Daddy called me a few days later, wanting me to come over and talk,” she said. “He was pretty adamant about it. I asked him if Boudreaux had talked to him and he said yes. At least he gave me a straight answer, but I told him I wasn’t ready.”

  She looked over at Wyatt. “I’m just so angry. So angry. With all of them. I mean, clearly I am my mother’s daughter. I look just like her. They didn’t adopt me, you know what I mean?”

  Wyatt nodded. “Yeah.”

  “She was with him, when she was supposed to be with Daddy. I’m so angry at her that I haven’t been able to see her or return her calls. I guess she knows now, because she stopped calling after I talked to Daddy,” she said. “I’m angry at him for not telling me a long time ago, but mostly I’m just…I can’t talk to him because as soon as it comes out of his mouth it’ll be real. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” He picked up one of her hands. “But listen to me. Nothing important has changed.”

  She looked away from the concern in his eyes. It made her feel too much. But staring at the yard didn’t help, either. The tears started sliding down her face again, despite her efforts, and she was suddenly very tired from trying to hide so much. She looked back at Wyatt.

  “Wyatt. I’m so lost,” she said quietly.

  “No. You’re not,” he said. “I know exactly where you are.”

  This time, when he put a hand on her shoulder, she leaned in and rested her cheek against his chest. His strong, familiar arms wrapped around her shoulders and he kissed the top of her head.

  She closed her eyes, breathed in the scents of clean cotton and autumn and warm skin, and stopped trying so hard to not need to be comforted by them.

  MRS. CORZO WAS A SMALL, delicate woman, with the pale, smooth skin so many Cuban women seemed to be blessed with. Her eyes, though, were rimmed in red, and there were dark smudges and swelling below them. When she raised her head to look at Maggie, Maggie felt a weight of guilt settle on her, like someone had just stepped carefully onto her chest.

  The woman’s body seemed to want to make as many physical connections as possible to that of her son. She held his hand, or he held hers, and she was standing so close to him that her hip and shoulder almost blended into him. Alfredo Corzo was a good-looking, clean cut man in his late thirties, though he looked like he could still be in college. He was just a few inches taller than Maggie, slim and neatly dressed in gray trousers, a white shirt, and black tie.

  “Señora Corzo, soy Maggie Redmond,” Maggie said quietly. “¿Habla Inglés?”

  The woman just nodded quickly, but her son spoke up for her. “Yes, she speaks pretty well,” he said.

  Maggie nodded at him, then held a hand out toward Dwight. “This is Deputy Shultz. We’re very sorry about your daughter.”

  “Gracias,” the woman answered. Maggie could barely hear her.

  Maggie looked from Mrs. Corzo to her son and then back again. “This isn’t a very sophisticated morgue. We don’t have a camera set-up or anything here,” Maggie said. She put a hand on the plate glass window beside them. “When you’re ready, the attendant will open the curtain so that you can see her. You understand, though, that you don’t have to do this? We can identify her without you.”

  Mrs. Corzo looked from Maggie’s face to the covered window. “Quiero ver,” she said quietly. “I want to see Marisol.”

  Maggie looked at her son. “It’s okay,” he said. “We’ll be okay.” He wrapped a hand around his mother’s elbow, as though worried she might fall.

  Maggie nodded, then tapped on the window. A moment later, the short black curtain slid smoothly, soundlessly open.

  Marisol was lying on a regular gurney made up with clean sheets, rather than a metal table. Larry’s empathy for people in mourning was one of the many things she liked about him. She had felt it herself, when David had been killed.

  A bright white sheet was pulled neatly up over Marisol’s neck, then folded back. The bruises were barely visible. There w
ere several seconds of silence. Maggie watched as every part of Mrs. Corzo’s face shifted just slightly, like a sand dune being rearranged by a good wind from the west. She heard a sound come from Alfredo Corzo’s throat, something he swallowed and stifled, like it might intrude on his mother’s pain.

  “Mi pequeña niña,” the woman whispered to the glass.

  “That’s my sister,” Alfredo said.

  “Okay,” Maggie said quietly. She gently touched the woman’s arm. “Señora Corzo, would you like to sit down?

  The woman shook her head just once, but she didn’t take her eyes from the glass. One fat tear slid down her smooth cheek.

  “Mami, do you want some water?” her son asked her.

  “Quiero ir ahí,” the woman answered. She looked at Maggie. “I want to go in with her, favor.”

  Maggie swallowed and nodded, then tapped on the door. Larry’s assistant, Marcus, opened the door just a bit.

  “Mrs. Corzo would like a minute with her daughter,” she said.

  Marcus, a young black man working an internship through FSU, nodded at Mrs. Corzo. “Yes, ma’am,” he said. He opened the door wider. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

  Mrs. Corzo nodded, then took her son’s hand from her elbow, though she didn’t look at him.

  “Mami,” he said quietly.

  “No,” she said.

  Maggie and Dwight followed them in. Alfredo stood back a ways, and Maggie and Dwight stopped behind him.

  Mrs. Corzo stood next to her daughter for a moment, then Maggie saw her cross herself, then lay a hand on Marisol’s forehead.

  “Mijita,” she said. “Mami siempre te ama.”

  Mommy always loves you.

  Maggie turned her head and stared out the window at the empty hall. It was barely 9am. She hoped that the morning had been awful enough that the rest of the day would seem better by comparison.

  “We’re first generation, you know,” Alfredo Corzo said quietly.

  He sat on one of the brown vinyl couches in the small lobby outside Larry Davenport’s office, both hands holding the bottle of water Marcus had given him. Dwight had gone with Mrs. Corzo to sign the necessary paperwork for taking her daughter back to Tampa tomorrow.